Category: Gender Studies
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The Pop Culture Lens: Being John Malkovich
In the thirtieth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I conclude the Halloween season by welcoming friend of the podcast, and fellow podcaster, Jim Laczkowski to discuss the existential film, Being John Malkovich (1999). In this episode, our conversation considers how the film portrays insecurity, which is…
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The Pop Culture Lens on Yojimbo (1961)
In the twenty-seventh episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I welcome back friend of the podcast Joe Belfeuil to discuss Akira Kurosawa’s samurai classic Yojimbo (1961). In this episode, the conversation focuses on the film’s position as a transnational and transcultural pop culture text that acts as a link in a…
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Cross-Gender Fandom
We understand a fan to be someone who’s affection for a media product to be above and beyond that of the rest of the audience (Jensen, 1992a, b). This affection involves higher and more various ways of engaging with the media product than others would exhibit. A common question in fan studies asks if this…
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The Possession and the Traditional Exorcism Narrative
This analysis presents an example of how we are analyzing the films of the exorcism cinema subgenre for how they reflect the traditional exorcism narrative, which you can read more about here and here. This analysis is based on the notes we took while watching the film, which are given here. The 2012 film The…
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The Pop Culture Lens Episode 16: The Exorcist (1973)
As I have been writing about for awhile now, Chris and I are working on a book project that explores the tensions depicted in exorcism cinema. That is, we are analyzing films that depict possession and exorcism to understand what is being said about the world through those representations. Part of this analysis has been…
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My Little Pony on The Pop Culture Lens
In the fourteenth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher and I are joined by Aaron Kashtan of Miami University in Ohio (https://ogresfeathers.wordpress.com) to discuss the gendered and transmedia nature of the long-surviving and recently rejuvenated franchise, My Little Pony. Our discussion focuses on the distinctions between the earlier manifestations of this franchise and…
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Cataloging Exorcism Cinema
For the past couple years now, we have been working on this project analyzing the tensions in exorcism cinema. We are currently writing a book on the topic, and part of the research for this book has been to track down and catalog all of the movies that in some way depict possession and exorcism.…
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Pop Culture Lens Episode 10: Mad Max (1979)
In the latest episode of our podcast, Christoper and I welcome two of our friends, and friends of the podcast, Joe Belfeuil and Clelia Sweeney, to discuss George Miller’s feature debut, Mad Max (1979). But we don’t stop there, weaving into our discussion all of the franchise, including the most recent one, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).…
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Men Watching Sex and the City, My Little Pony, and Oklahoma
The most recent issue of Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies contains an article I wrote based on the study I conducted for my dissertation. I wrote this article with the help of one of our fine undergraduate students at Dominican University, Kevin Miller, who is now pursuing his graduate school career. The article’s…
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Stigmata: Viewing the Church as Bad Guy
A long time ago, in what seems like a much different life, I had a huge crush on Gabriel Byrne. I am not exactly proud of that, but he was one of many actors that I have had crushes on, and is always the case when I have a crush on an actor, I must…
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